a spreading of wings, a bating of breath, a sense of something coming

Connection.

A beach made of stones, and there is nothing between the real and not-real but the sound of the sea under a deep blue sky. Stars barely visible for the clouds and near-full moon light. It may be another four, five days until it reaches the peak.

Bodies lay on rocks, close enough to touch. But there are words instead of stones between them. Carved out against the current of the ocean, smoothed by steady wind and a constant tumble against one another. On the shore, in hands and minds, these stone words tumble easily down the side of reaching minds illuminated in bars of sudden unanticipated light.

Blink against the night. Hang in silent suspension. Commonalities cause laughter like the scent of flowers shifting in the air.

Fluency, approach, echo and decay of words in foreign languages. Japanese, 日本語、and more. The struggle for statis, to stay put is less than the desire to push and push and push.

The best kind of progress is the kind that isn’t. Pushing without pushing — but being.

Desperate clinging to the idea of what it could be like to speak with the fluidity of a natural tongue. To match each word’s pace and tone in the depths of a heart. To run without losing breath. To climb without fear of falling down.

To love without bounds.

In the doorway of the innermost approachable room, there’s a gate posted, but the lantern is gone. Once it would have had the kanji for lightning. A test to passers underneath. Are you worthy enough? Enter if you dare risk death.

The caretaker must have forgotten to hang it out. And so, advantageous hearts have passed through without ado. Overcoming, not a paper lantern’s infertile magic but the passion of a careful heart.

Having passed into the dim inner half-light, quiet tongues greet one another wetly. It takes some seconds to get to where they want to be. And hours to get back again.

Pushing, fighting, struggling against the body-cages four-dimensional beings exist in.
We are rushing toward the far end of the universe. Tumbling down a long slide. Crashing, hard into the fabric of everything.

Each manifestation of evolution takes its turn on the top of the world. And when one falls short, we take turns holding one another up. Symbiotic and inter-dependent. We will both hold the ladder and see over the wall. Wer are nothing if not connected. One bolt to the machine. One cell to the body burden of the whole.

Knowing this drives me on.
That and the ability to be more than bodily lovers to one another
— but friends.

This is the highest we can fly without suffocating from the vacuum all around us. The strongest covalent bond of them all. To become known curvatures, familiar scars, remembered and revisited places in the universe. Specific gravity, atomic charge, the way certain chemicals respond. All tested and reaffirmed.

As time goes, the strongest lines become old friends.
And that is all there is.

The sun is coming.
The light, returning.
And the world will, without a doubt, grow.